Apartment houses now have or are having installed therein items of telecommunications equipment which are known as building entrance protectors ("BEP's"), and which among other functions, serve to safeguard telephone sets in the building from voltage surges produced by lightning or other causes. These BEP's contain connectors which provide interfaces between the telephone networks and individual subscribers in the sense that through those connectors are made interruptible electrical connections between tip and ring wire pairs from the network and tip and ring wire pairs from the telephone stations of those subscribers.
Such connectors in a BEP are, however, capable of being misused by unscrupulous persons if left unguarded. For example, with such connectors being freely accessible to all tenants in the apartment house, a first telephone subscriber in the building may well be able to meddle with the connectors so as to connect the wire pair from his station to the wire pair from the network assigned to a second subscriber and, thereby, have telephone calls made by the first subscriber charged to the second subscriber.
Accordingly, it is necessary to secure the connectors against unauthorized access. This has been done in the past by providing for each of the connectors in the BEP assigned to a particular subscriber, a separate hasp device which that subscriber locks by a padlock in a position restricting access by others to the connector or which, alternatively, the subscriber can unlock, by removal of the padlock, in case the subscriber has need to get at the connector. That past arrangement for avoiding tampering with a particular electrical connector has, however, the disadvantages among others that, if it is necessary for a telephone company repair man to have access to a connector secured by a hasp device locked by a subscriber, the repair man cannot by himself override the access blocking effect of the hasp device and, moreover, if the subscriber vacates his apartment without removing his padlock from the connector assigned to him, there is no way for the repair man to unlock the hasp device except by sawing off the padlock thereon.